


ghost

by silkinsilence



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:10:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13693746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: A coincidence, she tells herself. It is easier to think that.





	ghost

**Author's Note:**

> zgzcrafbmjdexbn

It was a coincidence.

She was in Cairo for business, attending a summit discussing the state of modern medical tech. She had skipped the previous few years; the last time she had gone, the Caduceus had been prominently featured. She had discussed her design, discussed licensing it or releasing the blueprints, had entertained the company of hundreds of people who wanted to know her or use her or both.

The last time she had gone, Overwatch had not yet fallen.

This year she would be an attendee, not a headliner. She intended to absorb as much as she could while flying as low under the radar as possible. She had briefly considered the idea of a disguise before dismissing it as ridiculous. She did not want to be noticed, but it wasn’t as if she had any concrete reason for her shame.

They didn’t know what she had done.

It was a coincidence that the summit fell almost five years to the day that Ana Amari had not returned from a counter-Talon strike. A coincidence, of course, that Angela did not fail to notice. Death had not stopped her life from its crushing orbit of that woman who had once been mentor, hero, lover.

Love.

It was not a coincidence that Fareeha was working in the city. It was not a coincidence when Angela decided to email her and ask if she wanted to meet.

She knew it was foolish. She knew, before she sent the message, that it would end badly. But she sent it and she waited for the guillotine to fall and hoped that the interim would be pleasant enough to forget the end.

How many offers to meet up with Reinhardt had she turned down on those few trips back home? How many messages from Torbjörn had she ignored? She had tried so diligently to silence the echoes of a past that caused too much pain to remember, and yet here she was, throwing it all away for something that merely resembled the real thing.

Fareeha, knowing the city better than she did, suggested the bar, but Angela arrived first. Her suitcase was filled mostly with suits, clothes appropriate to the conference. She did not wear them. Instead she donned a pale peach-colored dress that hung down past her collarbones. She sat at the bar and sipped her wine while her mind was fuzzy with static. She did not want to think about what she was doing or what she had done. She lived one instant to the next: glass pressed to her lips, tannin on her tongue, liquid sliding down the back of her throat.

“Oh, you beat me.”

She wasn’t in her work clothes. Angela was gratified. She hid her smile behind another slow sip and looked Fareeha Amari up and down.

She was taller than her mother, or perhaps that was just the heels. She wore a tight blouse of royal blue. Ana’s color. And underneath one eye, the wrong eye, was a tattoo.

“Fareeha,” Angela said, and smiled. “You look beautiful.”

She had disgusted Ana toward the end, she knew. It would take more than five years for the words of their arguments to cease echoing through her memory. And maybe all the things she had done back then were contemptible. Maybe the things she had done since were. But Angela reached out to take Fareeha’s hand and saw that flustered little grin and knew that this was perhaps the most contemptible of all.

Fareeha’s apartment was small and lovely-smelling. When they entered, it was clean, before Angela’s dress and Fareeha’s pants and then both of their underwear marked a sordid path to the single bedroom. There were pictures on the walls, but Angela couldn’t make them out in the dark. Nor did she particularly try. Her eyes were unfocused; she’d had too much to drink. Her fingers dug into strong shoulders—too muscular—and her thighs clenched around around the head of the wrong Amari.

She bit down on her arm to keep from moaning as she rolled her hips upward against Fareeha’s talented mouth. Good, so good, _Ana, Gott, bitte—_

It was wrong. There was no stern voice commanding her about. There was no delicious embarrassment burning through her. It was too gentle, too sweet, everything she failed to deserve.

When they were done, Fareeha lay flush against her back and wrapped her arms around her. The sheets were sticky. But it felt good to have someone holding her. She had never fallen asleep with Ana. She had only dreamed about it while sleeping alone.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Fareeha said, and followed it up with a sheepish laugh. “Thank you.”

Angela smiled out at the dark room, glad that Fareeha could not see her face as the tears welled up and spilled over.

She left when Fareeha was asleep, took a taxi back to her hotel and downed a bottle of wine offered by the minibar. When she woke it was to a handful of bewildered texts and voicemail from the daughter of the woman she loved.

She smiled down at her phone, deleted them all, and went in search of painkillers for her head.


End file.
